Amends in the Abyss: The Infernal Atonement of Scott Summers
by Quillon42
Summary: In order to earn his place at Madelyne Pryor's side in Heaven for eternity, Scott Summers must venture through the Nine Circles of Hell, Circle by tormenting Circle, and overcome all of his vices and other weaknesses that have hindered him throughout his life.
1. Redheadsident Evil?

AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS

CIRCLE ONE, LIMBO: REDHEADSIDENT EVIL?

(NB1: This is based somewhat on events that would come after X-Men: The End (if that's even possible); however, you DON'T have to have read The End in order to "get" this story. In the first few paragraphs here, I pretty much break down what happened in The End, at the close of it at least, to explain more or less what happened. As one note for those who did read it: I know that there's something about how Jean and Madelyne are one and the same and all at the end of it…but this story is a variation, in which Madelyne is still her own person. I just wanted to make her as separate and distinct from Jean as possible, even though, of course, she is officially Jean's clone).

(NB2: I will explain my stance on Teen Jean and Hope (as I kind of did in my last, "Illin'" Illyana story) in the next couple of days...hopefully (no pun intended) by this coming weekend. I will have the next installment for this story very soon, in any case).

It was the end of The End, once the fiery threat of the Phoenix-seizing sibling of Xavier, Cassandra Nova, was extinguished for the final time. All those ascending into the hereafter or thereafter—wherever it was—they were all aligned up and ready to ascend, a host of heroes most hallowed who fought most fervently, and passed most tragically, for the sake of the Dream. A veritable montage of said mutant martyrs had graced the minds of all still on Earth who elegized them, individuals such as Emma and Hank and Logan who pondered during the pertinent memorial services on how powerful, how wonderful these warriors were, how it would be so exhilarating to encounter them once more, once they who were left back on the planet would also escalate to their lofty heights, and be reunited with them again.

Among those already en route to the afterlife, Scott Summers stood in line next to his first and most loved of spouses—most loved of women as well—the soulful pilot turned shocking phantasm known as Madelyne Pryor. As he always ruefully remembered throughout his long, tortured life, Madelyne was a woman who graced Scott's existence so magnificently…then largely because of one heartless Mid-Eighties maneuver, an orchestration of abandonment on Cyclops's part, went from angelic to demonic in the course of a mere few years. Maddy raged at her husband's leaving her and her child Nathan Christopher, who would come to be Cable in time, and on the basis of such wrath she served as the perfect pawn for unholy entities which would fuel their prospective entry upon the Earth based on the fuel of her furor. The only one to be really burned at the end of that Infernal agony, however, was Madelyne herself, as the aggregate of her anger occasioned her own annihilation, by her own hand, in the end.

She reappeared inexplicably a number of times in the future, only to dissipate as quickly as she appeared. For the next couple of decades she was at most a ghost with some scraps of dignity; at worst, she was split into six separate selves and sold to those who would read of her exploits, during the fracas of the Phoenix Five, as little more than a mindless fembot flunky. Beyond these travesties of her person, Madelyne managed miraculously to appear one more time in The End, as a self who most closely approached her initial Eighties iteration. Through this person, Maddy pursued Scott, originally with the intent of assassinating him. The woman found, though, that she could not bring herself to do so, especially upon hearing her once-husband's out-loud laments of loss regarding his first and most tender marital moment. Consequently, Madelyne then took to safeguarding the man rather than stalking him, and when her son Nathan Christopher Cable was under attack at the close of this saga, Scott confronted his first wife, revealed his awareness of her presence, and together they tried in vain to save their son. Cyclops soon found to his deadly dismay that he could not save even himself, and as he too lay in state, alongside his first, but arguably worse love Jean Grey, Madelyne pooled her own life force with the latter so that, at least for a fleeting instant, she and Jean could become one.

In the abovementioned aligning, however, Madelyne was back to her own self again, and much closer in proximity to Scott now than was her crimson counterpart in Jean. She looked off to the side coyly, away from Scott, saw the world she once knew falling from her as she started to transcend; then she looked over to the man she loved more than anything—as she knew full well in her heart had felt the exact same.

Scott himself cast his gaze over in her direction as well, acknowledged the woman he had remembered and regretted, started to smile…

…then awoke, once again in the seemingly eternal abode in Anchorage, he asphyxiating in this accursed aloneness, unable to interact with that woman whom he wanted once again all this time.

He sat fully up in his bed with the utmost of the energy in his reserves, such as it was. Scott felt so depleted in this preternatural prison, this unholy house arrest he now occupied.

His son Nathan Christopher served as the Virgil, the spirit who broke down the terms of his sentence.

_You signed up for this of your own volition, Scott,_ the ethereal essence of Cable explained again and again in many of Cyke's dreams here. _This is your chance to prove yourself. To redeem yourself. To have such a fuller, more fulfilling afterlife than the one you could have otherwise, by yourself or with any other woman…even any iteration of Jean, if it could be imagined._

_ You know damn well that Madelyne was always a better match for you than the ladies you courted and cavorted with. Well…here, it's a much more major M who you have to mind for a time…one worse than Magneto, or Master Mold._

_ That M…yes, none other than Mephisto…he's the one who's taking you through your own private Hell now. Nine Circles for you to traverse, to make it through in order to elevate your soul to where it needs to be with Maddy's. And believe me, for some of the things she's done, Mom's gotta go through her own trials as well._

_ For right now, for the Circles in which you will be frequenting at present…you mainly hafta worry about yourself, and getting yourself fixed. _

_ Keep me and Mom in sight, though…we're the ones you're fighting for as well._

And then Scott would awaken to the lonely one-liness that was this place in Anchorage…this house which he once called home with Maddy and Nathan Christopher.

_For this Circle, you will mostly have to feel what she felt…feel the solitude she went through, when you left her…left us, Dad. Feel the goneness of it all, of the one whom you love most, of everything that that person did and said, and represented in your life._

And this Scott felt indeed, as he would look around, at a bedroom staid and cold, with no warmth to gather from a wife. He hugged the sheets as close as he could to his body, but he just couldn't generate the heat he made with her. Spooning the pillow, as he did probably ten hours out of every "day" here, didn't make it much better.

Then he would spend all that time in the kitchen, with pans with which he would make steak and eggs—his favorite, but he could never cook it the magnificent way Maddy did. In time the guilt prompted him to make enough for two; he figured he might as well, as the refrigerator constantly, spiritually restocked the stuff for him. So he made his fave for him and an imaginary Mads, simulated the conversations he used to have with her.

"I'm thinking of going out and making for more firewood."

"Oh, stay in today…you go out too much. We have enough wood as it is."

"Nah…I gotta get out and feel the air a bit."

And then Scott would stare at the back of the chair in which she used to sit, musing to himself. He really wanted to get out of the house to think to himself of Jean, of the Jean whom he believed he lost on the Blue part of the Moon. Now he just recited the last line of the conversation to taste again the sentence he formulated to the woman who really mattered, the one with whom he should have spent the remainder of his existence and energy.

Some mornings the anguish was enough to make him drop to the kitchen tile and hug the other chair's legs, as if it could somehow get her pajama pant legs and slippers to materialize.

The empty crib was also a crucible all its own. Kids never knew or appreciated the cuteness, the wonder, the miracle of a newborn infant child. The radiance of it all came from the resplendence of the baby's innocence and purity per se; but in another way, perhaps a more selfish way, that baby was beautiful because it was the bond, the fusion between oneself and one's soulmate. The son Scott had wasn't just Nathan Christopher; he was Madelyne Scott also, the product of the coming together of him and his lover, and his first and most beautiful and wondrous wife, of their intimacy so innocent in that huge warm bed, which he earned from so many missions off on mutant mashups. In any other profession involving such danger, he would have earned his retirement at least ten times over. Why couldn't he have just hung it all up then, and stayed with his family? His addiction to adventure ruined his life, like any other such compulsion.

Scott would ruminate and ruminate on this, getting little sleep sometimes. Lack of rest didn't matter here, though, for two reasons. For one, he had nowhere to go; looking out the windows yielded only a white void, as if the place were snowed entirely in, though the "reality" of this afterlife was that there was but a vacuum beyond the homestead here. The front door was only a decoration; for the record, it didn't budge if Scott would try it, but it wouldn't lead to anywhere anyway.

Secondly…some of the nocturnal overtures he would experience…encounters worse than the Elmstreetiest of nightmares. The most horrible didn't have any clawed characters, no Freddies or even Logans…something worse, something somewhat indeterminate, but still definitively horrific.

Scott saw himself from the back, a blurry figure, walking deliberately down a hallway of his house in Anchorage at a sort of slanted, Dutch angle. Chilling curls of dreadful music welled up, just a few notes but enough to strike fear in the heart…

[euhhh]

[Euhhhhh]

[EUHHHHHHHHHH]

It made the man think of the introduction to some video game he believed he saw in the mid-to-late 1990s…something that the neighbors' kid played when he would visit with Jean.

_When he would visit with Jean…_God, how that entire marital experience paled so, in comparison to the time he had with Maddy.

Then Scott saw himself turn of a sudden, then start to cry out, culminating it all in a scream of utter consternation:

"Ahh…AHH…AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

In the midst of this yell, some red substance spurted out his way, and the view of himself then cut to one of his ruby-quartzed eye sockets. Whenever he would wake the next morning, he figured to himself that the nightmare really was like the start of that video game…but he recalled that there, the red substance was blood.

He could swear in the repeating sequence he experienced that there, it was hair instead.

Scott knew that even if it were the locks of a lady he once loved, though…they didn't belong to Madelyne.

Because he knew in his heart that she forgave him, that she blessed him with peace in a special, tender part of his psyche…and this was what kept him going, day after day here. He knew this was going to end at some point. It was just a question of when.

The question of who, as in To whom did those follicles pertain…well, that also stuck out in the Summers's mind.

So it would be that in another couple of days in that remnant of an enlivening Earthen household, the man would have both inquiries answered.

He was sitting on the couch one afternoon, watching the television; ordinarily, what he saw was nothing but snow—static onscreen to match the seeming "snow" of the white void outside. Scott would watch and watch away, while away all this time as a break from the bedroom and the kitchen and the crib encounter catastrophes, allow himself to stare into a state of stasis where the nightmares wouldn't reach him.

But now images emerged on the idiot box, foreclosing even that escape.

On the screen appeared Jean. It was her, his Jean, the one from so long ago, dressed in those original auric and obsidian duds that the overseeing X who was Charles had dressed her and the entire team. The camera closed up on her face, though…

…and what emerged from her porcelain countenance was the snarkiest of sneers.

_From the productions of Brian Bendis and fellow former Machine collaborator Brian Overton…the productions known as NOWBendOver…_

_Teeeeeeaaannn Jeeeeeeaaannn…the one you've remembered so fondly all these decades…_

Then the beauteous face froze in the most ghastly of grits.

…_is now being marketed as…_

…_DIET HOPE!_

A war-torn wasteland: the climax of some Battle-Atomic conflict.

"Kick her ass.

"Kick it extra hard…just for me."

And then all the other O5ers scattered around as they, together with this…forced farce of his first love, all assaulted some figure bound up in chains and a futuristic skull mask.

As they all fought, the features of the woman Scott thought he knew to be Jean Grey contorted, creased into an expression of attitude, of rage, of even hate like he never remembered. He must have forced himself to forget this semblance of her all this time.

_ For those of you who have found the taste of Hope Classic to be too strong or too heavy…here's something, a new ingénue to cut the sour with the sweetness you've savored all this time!_

"I can't stand all these love triangles…hexagons…dodecahedrons forming all around me! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

"I'm going to FLY UP INTO THE AIR…oh, Angel, catch me!"

The image froze, of this warped Jean with the white costume with green around the fringes, as she remained suspended in the air, literally in the arms of an Angel.

_ Diet Hope…bringing unbecoming belligerence…to your Ginger Goddess!_

"_I'm the Governor of Bendiana, and I approve this advertisement."_

It seemed to be the Commercial from Hell…well, one of the commercials in Hell, one would suppose, given where Summers was right now.

"Nope…they just couldn't hack the Classic, the most of them…"

Scott whirled around in his seat.

"…could they."

Upon turning the man beheld the Classic herself, looming above with the longest, most threatening of laser rifles.

"Hhh…"

Just as Scott started to say the name of his pseudogranddaughter, Hope Summers turned the gun on the man, aiming right at his head.

Although all this time in his own personal Limbo slowed his reflexes, Scott still managed to leap out of the way of the ensuing blast.

"Never got the chance to part your scalp quite the way I would have liked." She continued firing at Cyke as he tumbled all about his rec room, doing all he could to avoid being done in, even if it was after his official death.

"Why are you doing this…?"

"Because, 'Grampa'…

"I've been sent to retrieve your resignation."

"…What?"

"There's no way for you to win this, Scott." She paused to reload. Scott saw his chance, and started a sprint towards the girl…then stopped midway as she trained her weapon on him once more.

"Postmillennial programming says so, Slimmy my little faggoty fuckup…"

Scott had already leapt behind the couch once more, for cover, as "Classic" Hope continued her harangue. "Can't have any more redheads, Summers! You KNOW you had more than any one man's allotted quota in the Premillennial Era! Tended a harem that would make a eunuch like Mr. Bendiana himself blush!

"Speaking of eunuchs…"

Hope started aiming her rifle lower, making the blasts run across the floor, tried to flush the man out from behind the couch. All these seconds, she thought to herself heretofore, could have just run on over to where he was, but she was well aware that he could open fire himself at any second. He was holding back, though, for some reason.

The fact was that all this time in the house made the man afraid. He didn't want to do anything wrong by anyone, especially anything wrong by redheads…he was just so conditioned as of now.

Sensing eventually that Scotty wouldn't attack, Hope just went ahead over to his position…

…then was tripped up by the man, who stumbled out by chance at that very instant. Scott was desperate in trying to get away, all these years here dulling any kind of physical ability he had. Cyclops was clumsy as Hell now.

Clumsy in Hell, really.

The two tangled up, and Hope of course came out on top. She reigned over Scott, running his rifle across his throat, pushing it down in an effort to strangle the man. The redness he always perceived started to go pink, leading to the white he didn't want.

"I'm…going…to fuck you up…in a way I never did during your own Dark Phoenix days…"

Scott looked all around as his vermilion vision continued to fade, looking for something now, anything. The weakness within him faded out of instinct to survive, now.

"THAT'S IT!"

The man's head shifted towards the television.

"KICK HIS ASS!"

Shifted towards the frightening porcelain face gritting again, now filling the screen. Hope didn't even bother to notice the voice, just kept pressing down with her pulverizing peashooter.

"KICK IT EXTRA FUCKING HARD…JUST FOR MY OWN LOVELY, IRRESISTIBLE COPPER ASS…"

This was when Scott noted the small log near his left hand.

"YOU'RE NEVER LEAVING HERE, SCOTT," the Diet Dame's voice kept going from the television. He ignored it as best he could as he kept reaching for the log, the fragment of his past with Madelyne…

"YOU'LL NEVER GET TO EVEN THE SECOND CIRCLE…"

His hand was almost there…

"YOU WILL NEVER REACH YOUR FIRST, MOST LOVED WIFE…"

He could feel it at the tips of his fingers now…

"WHO DOESN'T GIVE A FUCKING SHIT ABOUT YOU ANYHOW…

"THE JEAN GREY TEST TUBE FAIL THAT SHE IS."

That was it.

Any inner inhibitions now expired within him, Scott hauled with the log in his hand and shucked it into the side of the Classic. As she reeled, dropping her rifle, the man reached over and placed her softly in a submission hold that knocked her unconscious.

"You don't fuck with me in my house," Scott said over Hope's now-still form. The television crackled behind him.

"Oh-hooooo, Scotty, my man!" cackled the formerly fair and Teen Jean. Her face now screwed up into the worst scowl imaginable, although the brunt of her voice was somewhat diminished in Hope Classic's defeat. "You think that'll do you any good? You think that will begin to get you out of here?

"I've got Hope Xorn comin' right over to your position! Yeah, me and the O5ers kicked her ass indeed, but good…nevertheless, her spirit's…spiriting itself right over to where you are anyway.

"Yep, we done skull-fucked the skullface…but you've got a date with her annnyyyyy sec…"

[CRASSSHHHHHH…]

The log from a moment ago now protruded from the television screen, its hurler unable to take anymore from these titian-tressed tormentors.

A whoosh sounded from behind Scott. He spun around again, ready to face the terrifying Xorn brand of the murderously-mass-appealing Hope.

Scott beheld instead a large, gaping black void…what appeared to be a gate, a portal. Across the top of the apparent exit to this part of Hell read the words:

ABANDON ALL HOPE(S)* YE WHO ENTER HERE

(*To account for the varieties of the Jeans whose attitudinous essences aped that of the miserable Mutant Messiah, of course)

"Thank freaking GOD for that!" Scott shouted, starting for the portal. If he had the energy to do so, he would have kicked up his fucking heels in midair.

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. The Tides and Towels of Temptation

AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS

CIRCLE TWO, LUST: THE TIDES AND TOWELS OF TEMPTATION

(NB: I know this is already getting a bit old, but I swear this will be the last time I do this: the main maiden of this chapter based on carnal indulgence will be none other than Kwannon—that is to say, the Asian body which Psylocke has occupied all this time. It is NOT Betsy, but rather the Asian mind in the Asian body (if you've read my other stories, you would know how this works…not sayin' you have to read them, just sayin' and all). Now, as will eventually be made clear in this story down the line, the individuals Scott encounters here are not the actual characters anyway—they are just manifestations or projections of them from his own perspective. It is NOT the case that all these other characters have gone to Hell; in fact, most of them are in Heaven, their souls anyway…as I will establish by the end of the story, Kwannon, for example, is in Heaven with Matsu'o, who has been her own true love, just as Scott is trying to get to Madelyne here through all the Circles. Not every Circle, by the way, will feature something Maddy endured; in fact, although I referred to this story before, when I mentioned I was going to write it in the coda to past stories, as the "Mega Madelyne" story, it's really just as much about Scott individually, and about the both of them as a couple. Anyway, for this chapter here, this will be the last time I will get into carnal stuff with Kwannon, as I don't want to cheapen her character so much (to be fair, as with my Polka story, here I will have beefcake physical description of Scott also, to match the stuff on his temptress here). But I will be done with Kwannon in this manner after this; I promise. As Chief Joseph once famously said, and I quote him verbatim: "I will perv out on Kwannon no more forever." Enjoy.)

Scott couldn't remember what happened immediately following his pushing through the portal from the previous place. It was if he had just…fainted upon his passage, his transit as nebulous as that of his X-Successors through the Siege Perilous, its sleek scarlet surface as carmine ominous as Scott's own ruby lenses. At the moment he was floating slowly through another dream, one in which he came face to face with his son once more. Cable was looking as gruff as he had ever been, was looking like the usual great-grandfather to Cyclops instead of the newborn whom Scott originally recalled him as.

What somewhat put the O5 Orpheus off a bit here, though, was the presence of that other seeming self of his son's…the one who seemed to wear a samurai's toaster for a helmet atop his head.

_Cable…_the thoughts pounded through his beyond-the-mortal-plane brain. _Stryfe…_

_Feel familiar?_

Scott's attention shunted to the version of his son which he at least thought he knew so much more thoroughly. _What's this, Nathan?...Why is your…other you…here?_

_Just trying to get you all situated for the next Circle,_ Cable replied, _giving his father a stern look. We're entering into Lust now. Of course, you've probably had this nightmare, the one of me and my ever-wayward clone, on so many nocturnal occasions in your time on Earth…_

_…but there was one time, while you were on a mission far out, in the hinterlands of the Mother Country of the Mutant Colossus. Do you remember having these visions, then?_

_Y…yes…and then…I woke up abruptly…ran out to the…_

_Good. You can place it all, now. Just trying to help here, give you fair warning of what you're gonna be up against…in more ways than one._

_This dream here was Mom's idea, by the way. She's trying to get you to her as smoothly as possible. Dealing with her own demons alongside, too, she is; believe me, as tough as you think you might have it, Madelyne's working two jobs here in her own aftertime. You just bear that in mind when you get to her in the end._

The images of both Cable and Stryfe then faded, Scott left once more to his lonesome in the swirling mists of his subconscious. As he felt himself falling slowly through the steamy soup surrounding his sturdy frame, he thought about all the loving relationships he'd had in his life…and how for all the ones which came to fruition, there was an element of real love in each. Of course, on one end of the spectrum of the man's heart, there were the metric tons of marvelous times with Jean, which really needed no expounding-upon here, but suffice it to say she was the first woman with whom Scott really knew love, tenderness, and intimacy on a romantic level. This was not to say that she was the woman with whom he had known the greatest love, though.

On the other end of it all, there was Emma. Despite all the denigrating things one could say about the woman per se, as well as the inherent ickiness that the two seemed to radiate as a couple generally, Scott and Emma shared love at the end of the day, a love that very late in the pair's life had sired several children. In the end, beyond all the lust that listed to and fro upon the seeming sleaze-ship that was Scott and Emma's relationship, there was still a foundation of true love at the core.

(Yes, this author has to admit that he just coughed something up after typing that line, just as you most likely did after reading it).

But there was one encounter which stuck out in the man's mind…for him personally, one woman with whom he never built any such foundation, beyond the mere carnality of adult fantasy. Oh, as with Jean and Emma, she was just as much a psionic persuaderess, whose attempts at suasion regarding Cyclops involved swaying, sashaying, and just outright seducing her way into becoming his squeeze. And this woman almost succeeded in stealing Scott from the amorous occupation he'd had at the time with the Machine's first genetically superior ginger.

Perhaps what kept Scott from falling, back then, at least in the Machine's mainstream 616 reality if not this one, was the fact that the woman attempting to woo the Clops was coopted in psyche by another dame who was much more diffident and deferential to the boundaries of her compatriots when it came to significant othership.

In other words, if it weren't for Betsy's inadvertent barging into the body of the astounding Asian lady attempting to stealth her way into Scott's space in so many ways, that other mind within the minx might have succeeded in the endeavor.

Well, in this Hell now, there was nothing stopping the ninja out for nooky with the noble leader of the Xers.

And perhaps it would be this moment, in this Circle, that Scott would finally be claimed on all counts by Kwannon.

He awakened abruptly, again in a bed as with the last time…only this mattress felt much less stable, felt somewhat wobbly, felt somewhat…

…watery.

But unlike any waterbed in any novelty resort at which Scott might have stayed in the past, this one felt as if it contained a monsoon within the mattress, as if something within were living, breathing…swimming?

And then, at the foot of the bed, the lady emerged, sprang up, sprouted up in a spraying spout of sea spume. The dark lavender locks of the lady hung before her face at first, then were thrown back as she exposed her beauteous features upon the man.

"Ahh…" she started, stretching her sultry shape into full elongation before his eyes, Kwannon fully unclothed save for sea suds covering critical places. "It _is_ another good morning…

"…isn't it, Scott."

She was such a stunning sight, with her glorious golden flesh flaunted all out in the open save for that slight scatch of seafoam, that Scott almost doffed his shades in spite of himself, like some 90210-theme-song-featured Jason Priestley in a jag of piqued arousal. (Yet another dated reference from this author; sorry about that). But he kept himself in check at the last second.

"Yes, Cyclops," Kwannon continued as she kept flexing her assets before him, noticing his fingers going to his glasses without her even opening her blissfully-closed eyelids. "That's about the only thing I'd like for you _not_ to take off.

"Believe me…"

Then she ceased the stretch sharply, hunkered down prone onto the bed like a panther ready to pounce.

"I know of a certain pair of something I'd very much like to wrest from you."

Before the man could do anything, Kwannon's right hand shot out, grabbing the bottom of one of the legs of the soft bedtime shorts Scott realized only just now that he was wearing.

"This bed is sooooo sleek and sooooo smooth," Kwannon went on, whisking the undergarments from the fearless leader without any effort at all. "You and I, we decided it would be the best thing; it's let me do the two things I always love to do, without missing a beat in between.

"I can…literally…swim within it…" and now the lady eased herself more and more northward on the bed, her face reaching right between Scott's kneecaps, "doing laps within the linens, even while you sleep!

"And then…when I'm all done…"

She went a foot higher—and Scott reached down suddenly and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Pool party's long past over, lady."

And, as softly, yet as cogently as he could, he executed a maneuver that tossed her, off the mattress and high into the air. As he predicted, the woman wound herself into some kind of ninjaic corporeal configuration, so that she landed on her feet. Scott never wanted to harm her in any way; it was just that, when one got down to it, Kwannon's temptation was a test, and the objective the man had in mind prompted him to pass.

"You want to break my heart, Scott," said the scorned ex-Psylocke as she shucked out her psychic knife reflexively from her place next to the bed.

She then thrust it in fully, into the side of the sea-shimmering sleep support.

"I'M GOING TO GO AND BREAK YOUR BOLLOCKS!"

In a blinding burst the whitish watery contents of the waterbed were ejected from the interior of the mattress, causing a tiny tidal torrent in the bedroom upon which Scott was just so much flotsam, with Betsy's psyche-copilot as the jetsam. The two were whirled all around, to and fro by wild waves, Kwannon way ahead of Scott as the latter held on tightly to an erect wooden bedpost in a vain attempt to moor himself, while the former laughingly allowed her delicate form to flow into the adjoining bathroom. Seconds later, Scott's hands shimmied off the shaky stick at the head of the bed, and he found himself following his mattressmate headlong into the loo.

He spun around and around before the doorway, like a sock in a laundry cycle, the sound of Kwannon's gleeful giggling flooding his ears even more than the moisture mobbing his body had flooded his skin. He could swear, too, though he could not see it in the haze of the waves, that there issued the sound of shower knobs squeaking on…then, as he was thrown one last time towards the bathroom proper, those same knobs squeaking abruptly off.

This wacky world of wetness had fogged up the man's garnet glasses something fierce. He struggled to smear them clear…but then found that his arms were pinned, by something ever so soft. And then he felt the warmest sensation pressed up, hard against his legs, stomach, and chest.

As was the case in Russia all those years back, here too Scott had encountered the purple psi-lady in the bathroom, she here as then wrapped in nothing but a towel.

Only this time, he was wrapped in the same with her.

"Oh, my," purred the lady, the faded fabric clapped around herself and the man, the woman's arms enveloping Scott's torso, as his own had involuntary circled around hers. "We are in quite the fine snit now…aren't we.

"Did I mention…" she went on, her palms rubbing passionately against the hairs on the man's back, her full breasts pressing ever tighter against his chest, "that beyond swimming and snuggling, that showering is my third favorite thing to do? After all, they all involve so much…moisture…"

Her soft, smooth belly planted itself ever more firmly against his own stomach, the planes of flesh parted a minute later only by the erectitude that was admittedly, to Scott's shame, emerging as of now in spite of all his resistance.

Scott tried as hard as he could to break the embrace of all that held him, but neither the towel nor the temptress would give a single centimeter.

"All you have to do, to be released from this predicament…

"…is kiss me, Scott."

Kwannon then closed her violet eyes, opened her mouth wide; it looked, though, as if the latter were shunted more widely ajar to scarf Scott down rather than to smooch him.

He was certain that giving into the lady entirely in this way was not the path to Madelyne—the woman whose warmth had outshined the hollowness of the hug that had him right now. Maybe for Matsu'o the clutches of Kwannon yielded kindness and true love…but for Scott, this was nothing more than a literal booby trap.

The man had to act quickly. Just as the lady arched in, her mouth looking to clamp down upon his own…

…Scott thrust his face slightly forward, but at a downward angle, allowing the woman's lips, then her teeth, to catch on the edge of one of his lenses. Startled, Kwannon reared her head back…

…to find that she was clasping the infamous Summers spectacles between her cherished choppers.

"Try to kiss me again," said Scott, his eyes shut tightly but optic energy essences pulsating from behind them, "and you'll find you will not have 'made out' as well as you'd have liked."

Kwannon broke the embrace slightly so as to try and maneuver the man's shades back upon his eyes. At that instant, Scott tore himself from her.

"Show me the way out of here, now!" He still had his irradiating eyes closed at the moment, but was ready to let them fly open at any instant. Naively for a second he believed that Kwannon would just guide him, under threat of being blasted, to the exit from this Circle.

Oh, she showed him to the exit, alright. But not in the manner that the man had expected.

Positioning herself appropriately, Kwannon backed herself up against Scott and executed a shoulder throw that landed him up and over her and directly into the bathtub against the wall. A second later Cyke found himself splashing around in a three-foot-deep well full of scalding hot water.

"You spurn my advances…you'll pay the price," the lady hissed, hurling the man's glasses so that they struck him in the chest. "You can go to Hell for all I care.

"Or, I guess…farther into Hell."

With that, Kwannon spun on her heel, Scott throwing on his shades and receiving one last glimpse of the woman's wondrous ass as she pumped away from the tub in a huff. The bottom underneath him started then to give way, and the man knew, as he proceeded to sink, that he was passing through to the next Circle. Though stiff still in the nether regions, Cyke was serene in the psyche, with the knowledge that he was progressing toward the one embrace that incited his passions more than anyone else.

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. (After)life, (Hell)fire, Order of Fries

AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS

CIRCLE THREE, GLUTTONY: (AFTER)LIFE, (HELL)FIRE, AND AN ORDER OF FRIES

What surrounded Scott now was not the acrylic and enamel of the bathtub into which he was thrown a moment ago, but rather the eons-actualized rock foundation that served as the lining of the crater in which he now cowered.

He looked up above, and noticed not the ceiling tile of the "safehouse" of seduction in Russia, but the celestial treasures of outer space instead.

_ Here, Dad._

Scott looked over, to something coming to him over the right lip of the small hollowing in which he was situated. It somewhat felt like a small grave, and he suddenly felt desperate to climb out.

What clattered itself just enough over the side edge for the man to take was a…dinner plate?

He grabbed it carefully, and gratefully acknowledged the staple of steak and eggs to which he was so accustomed all those years, whether on Earth or in his own personal Limbo.

_ Take it down, but take your time_, said the Cable Virgil as the Clops slowed the cramming of the sustenance he was enjoying. _You will certainly need your strength for this next one, as this will be a test on a literally…cosmic scale._

_ There are some other things with this,_ Cyke noted as he checked out everything on the platter. _Scrapple, parsley, home fries…_

_ …Yeah; Mom thought you might want to try out some new stuff._ Cable's projected form was a bit harder to see in the outer space ether; it was much grainier, reducing the presence to much more of a ghostly voice than it was before. _Variety's the spice even in the afterlife, I suppose._

_ Hmm._

A pause.

_ You're gonna have to answer for a lot of the…consuming you did here, in this Circle,_ Nathan's voice went on. _Especially based on what happened during that short stint in which you were arguably at your most powerful._

_ …or at least, at the most powerful that the Cosmic Cockatoo allowed you to be._

_ What?..._

_ Are you still in there, Scott? You still sleeping? _

_ It's time to get out of that little gorge…and GORGE._

Suddenly Scott found himself being levitated slowly but forcefully out of the small slot into which he was shunted. He was placed gently, supinely on the surface of wherever he was, and gathered himself a second before hushing himself up to face the lady standing before him.

She cut a very comely shape, with her skintight sea green suit with golden sash, the lady going on about gorging and gorges herself very gorgeous.

_… …Jean?_

_ Close,_ replied the frontier-faring frau before him, she setting the table for the two to talk telepathically. _I'm the "Jean" you knew for only so long, several decades back. The one who gallivanted with your All-New, All-Different crew, all those years ago…_

_ …then found that there wasn't a place for her anymore…once she became a bit…compulsive, in certain of her habits. _

She took a breath, her ubernatural body able to inhale "air" even in a vacuum. She then continued. _Yep, I'm the first Phoenix that all you Xers knew, way back when. The Alien Clone Phoenix, to be exact._

_ For a while, in this afterlife, I've been wearing white (with even a white fiery raptor upon the costume's chest—so as not to be confused with the "Crowny" White Phoenix that the "real" Jean started wearing, a few years after the year 2000 on your Earth. _

_For a little bit I also took to calling myself "Insane Clone Phoenix"…but upon scanning my beloved Planet Earth recently I've noticed that there is an unbearable musical outfit boasting a similar title, so I just went back to ACP instead of ICP._

_But…Scott protested, shouldn't you be nothing but ash? _

He recalled that ever-painful memory harrowing for him and maddening for readers everywhere, to be hearing it now for the 676766767667676th time, of how he and the figure he thought to be his Jean had absconded from the vindictive Shi'ar all that time back, how they had found a little cubbyhole shelter to get away in, complete with its own brief, breathing space…and its own little laser cannon. Perfect for an all-consuming suicide.

_SCOTT!_

_JEAN!_

Yes, everyone remembers. Yet again.

But this was the afterlife, now, and no matter how much one was atomized…one's spirit reconstructed him or her as he or she was last recalled before said disintegration.

The ACP filled Scott in on all of this as he stood there, stymied to see this lady once again.

_But you should really know all about this anyway, as the Phoenix was once in you…right?_

_Yes…well, I…_

And as Scott raised a hand, he noted it coated in a coal-black glove that he remembered wearing during that one certain time.

He raised his fingers to his head, and noted too that the bird-beaky kind of Phoenix Five visor was atop his eyes once again as well. Then he looked down and noted the ruby and onyx effects otherwise to complete the costume.

_I'm sure you remember it most vividly now, with the clothes making the man you once were._ ACP started strolling off across the Blue Area of the heavenly body the two were occupying, leaving Scott a second to saunter on his own mentally, mulling over his megalomania and its attendant acts he perpetrated in line with it, in this persona so long ago.

Cyclops and four others—Emma, Namor, Peter, and Illyana—they all took on the Phoenix Force ever so involuntarily…it consumed them from within, corrupted them, made them eventually turn on each other, as was the way with all bad guys in time. Scott was the hungriest of the human-super hippos, chowing down on the cosmic comestibles of power that that Phoenix offered, to the detriment and exclusion of the other four, betraying even Emma in the end. And in time, even the insatiable Cosmic Clops was stopped, the Phoenix ultimately abandoning him too to starve for that power again in a penitentiary. In the end, good had prevailed once more.

But oh, all the collateral came that came with it…

_So given that you are one who, like me, loves to EAT…_

Now the mantis-clad Moon mistress was wending her way back to Scott's position on the planetoid.

…_it's ever so PERFECT that you've gotten here just in time for lunch, Scott. Because I just found this great red giant that's just BEGGING, GOADING to be gobbled up…_

_Je…Phoenix,_ Scott said, putting up his despotically darkly-gloved hand once more, _I'm through with those…compulsions. I consumed enough, during my own Countdown-From-Phoenix Five, Dark days. It wasn't good; the taste was never satisfying. In ended up being, in fact…pretty gross._

_It's just not my thing anymore._

_But you and I, we could…we could come together, ever so wonderfully through it, Scotty,_ protested the powerful lady. _It's MEALS like this that bring families together!_

_Come on…I'll get Cable to the table as well. We'll all be a family, the three of us. Just like you, Jean, and Nathan Christopher during the Askani "Adventures Of" days. Just like you, the baby, and Madelyne during Anch…_

_NO!_ Scott shouted in his telepathy, unable to withstand this temptation anymore. Just as with Kwannon in the previous Circle, here too the man was feeling an itch again, a pull of a pang to get him to give in to something he wanted so badly. Seeing this place here through his beaky visor again…just the sensation of that made him want to…want to eat again, like that.

ACP just furrowed her brow and frowned at first, giving her love a guttural groan and a glower besides.

Just as Scott turned his head to look to the expanse of stars to the side, to stave off the awkwardness of the moment, as well as the recollect that once wondrous time in which he showed off the same to his beloved first lady in marriage, Madelyne…

He felt the irresistible toughness of a TK shove, oomphing at omega level, as his body was thrown from the Moon he was on, he now hurtling towards Earth, seconds later he feeling the burn of fiery atmospheric reentry.

_Fine,_ spat the ACP in his head, the lady's clothes shimmering red now where she stood in space, as her lover sailed down the layered airy steppes of the Earth's atmosphere. _More for me, then._

_And you can feel the FRYING that you yourself caused, at the climax of your own cycle as the Phoenix! _

Cyke's form felt the infernal agony of hellfire, although his body was not actually being burned, given that ACP was good enough to let him keep the majority of his P5 form all the way down to the surface of Africa, specifically the country of Mbangawi where a newborn infant had flexed mutant power instinctively and leveled an entire hospital, during one Astonishing, Xenogenetic jaunt the Xers had experienced a number of years back, our time.

_At least I was willing to SHARE!_ shouted the ACP, still in the man's head as he worked out the cobwebs on the veldt upon which he now reeled. _If *I* had four or more co-Phoenixes, I SURELY would have kept the balance of ourselves! _

_I could always CONTROL it better than you could, Scott._

_Now feast on the blood and carnage that you yourself wreaked upon this population, back when YOU were Dark._

Scott could now note smoke issuing from the tops of trees in the far distance, on the edge of the veldt. Then everything from bark to soil blew up in a blast of flame from above.

_This was the start of the cosmic burning that you brought upon the Earth in your last stand, Scott,_ continued ACP in his mind as the man started up and began to sprint in the direction opposite the frying of the Mbangwian forests. _You really cooked a lot of the planet's piecrust. I guess you just prefer barbecue; to each her or his own, I suppose._

_Me, you see, I'm more into my yellow dwarves and pulsars a bit more on the rare side…_

The sound of even the cosmic Alien Clone Phoenix could not escape being drowned out by the roar of flames all around the man now, circling him and offering no egress, the fricassee fracas that Cyclops made of his Dark reign as Phoenix dawning on him fully in this firsthand experience he never had. The frying that he had ordered in his cosmic madness came to him completely, closed in on him.

"MADDY, HELP ME!" the man screamed, looking frantically all around. "WHAT DO I DO?!"

No answer came explicitly for several instants. He noted for the first time that, in the still-football-field radius of his fire-encircled surroundings, there were some soon-to-be-victimized animals rushing along the circumference of the conflagration, assaying in vain to elude their impending deaths. One that he witnessed not running along was a wildebeest, convulsing, choking…

…vomiting, very graphically, a repast it had taken down earlier in the day.

It had to be a sign. Cyke realized he could still feel slight remains of the Phoenix power still within him, lingering in his guts.

The flames coming ever closer, he looked one more time to the cosmic charcoal gloved hand, with its terrible fingers.

He crammed the index and the middle as far down the throat as he could, thinking to himself all the while of how he rejected all this power, how he renounced the terrible strength and influence of the Phoenix Force.

Scott passed out before he purged, but the miserable cosmicmeal within him commenced to repeat on him, then expelled itself from his mouth just as he sunk into unconsciousness again, just as the inferno all around converged, looking to consume the cowed, crumpled virtual victuals that the man seemed to be right now.

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. Avarice, Auricons, Maricons

AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS

CIRCLE FOUR, GREED: AVARICE, AURICONS, AND MARICONS

What Scott felt next was not the sensation of being horribly roasted alive, but rather that of being slipped into something very snug and mildly toasty. The sound of something slamming issued very distantly in his mind as the voice of his firstborn took over once again.

_You've been doing very well so far, Dad,_ assured Nathan Christopher again, his image beginning to become etched out in a ceiling before Cyke's eyes that was a bit too close to his face for his liking. Apart from a very faint, deep yellow light from off to the side, Scott could make out nothing in the way of his surroundings. The somewhat of a cubby into which he was crammed now felt even more constricting than the crater slot into which he was slammed at the beginning of Gluttony. What was this one all about?

_ Mom and I both want you to get through all of these layers of Hell, so we can all be together again. I know you may be feeling a bit winded by now, but you have to keep going._

_ I…I understand, Chris._ Scott managed the thoughts as calmly as he could, even though the uncertainty of his surroundings gave him pause. _And I am forever grateful to you and Madelyne for your helping me get this far as well. …I wish there were something I could do to help her out, too._

_ You can, Dad. …Just…you can talk to her, right now, if you'd like. Let her know how you feel. Tell her how much you want to meet again too, as she wants the same._

Scott cleared his mind and allowed himself a brief reprieve from all the undulating anxiety as he gathered his thoughts. _Madelyne,_ he sent out to her mentally, _I cannot thank you enough for your help, and your patience in light of all I am going through. I also cannot say how incredibly, eternally sorry I am for hurting you so long ago. If I could liquidate my soul to go back and erase all the pain I caused you, and through this, purchase for you a life free from the torments you had endured, I would do it in an instant. I said on Earth that there was no possible way that I could atone, make up for what I did to you…and to our son. I said that there was nothing I could do for either of you. It is my most fervent prayer now that what I am undergoing at present would begin to begin to set things right. _

_ I want you to know that, should I have the privilege…no, the blessing…of ever even seeing you again…I will gladly, joyfully serve you, be bound in eternal servitude to you, even if you will not accept me again as the man in your life. It would be an honor for me to serve you for all time, to begin to compensate for the unthinkable hurt I had caused you._

_ I want you to know above all that I love you, so overwhelmingly much, and that I will never, ever cease loving you…even if I never see you again, which I pray will not be the case._

_ I want so excruciatingly badly for the three of us to be a family again. The family that you, me, and Christopher created was the freest and purest experience I had ever known, and my life's greatest accomplishment. I will always rue that my actions caused it all to fall apart, far too soon._

Scott then took a deep, wavering breath and stared at the uberclose ceiling before his nose as the space of about three minutes passed.

_ That was very beautifully put, Dad. Where she is right now, in her own place of afterlife crisis…Mom just heard it too, and she wanted to let you know that she very much appreciates your words._

_ That's…that's wonderful to hear, Christopher._

_ Yeah… She wanted you to know, too, that she really wants to see you as well, when the both of you make it through this._

_Thank; thank GOD._

_ I of course want to see the both of you too…_

_ Of course. Another long pause. Can you…can you tell me what's to come next, Chris?_

_ …Ah, yes. Where you are now is a region where…value is placed, on the prettiest yet pettiest of things. Amassment of the matters not important in life…acquisition of the items that stand as the opposite of the "greatest accomplishments" in life that you have ever known, as you mentioned the term a few minutes ago…that's the name of the game in this Circle. The key here, as with the two previous places, is to resist whatever temptations come your way, regarding the need to hoard or waste what does not really count…but in this place especially, you will be paying the PRICE…in more ways than one…should you "sell out" regarding your soul. Be careful, Father._

The Clops took a second to take this all in. The small cleft in some kind of rock in which he was hemmed felt ever warmer for a few instants, and in that time he became severely fearful.

Then:

"Wait!"

A tense pause, as he could feel some kind of gaze upon him, lasering in on his position more than the most intense optic blast despite the fact that he could not yet register who it was watching.

"Yeah…he's still breathing in there. Get him out!"

Scott's eyes flickered open just as he felt rough hands managing his figure at the behest of a voice that was all too familiar. It was an inflection that belonged to a fine lady with whom he spent far too much time at a very close proximity.

And as the aforesaid shaky hands of nervous handlers kept conducting the Clops more awkwardly out of a chamber far too cozy for comfort, and then started hastily wiping what must have been ashes from his torso and limbs, he assessed in turn the grime and corruption that had rubbed off from the aforesaid lady and had stuck to him indelibly.

"Emma," Scott managed finally, measuring the woman before him prior to taking stock of his surroundings in this new Circle. The amber empress of immorality was decked out in the same gold and white semi-silken, semi-flesh getup in which she was attired during the Phoenix Five debacle, which by this point Cyclops had hoped was an atrocity that he could put behind himself permanently, especially given the threats and horrors of the last Circle.

Expecting still the beaky visor atop his head, as well as the coal-and-crimson duds from his own stint during that cruel crossover, Scott reached up to his noggin with a hand…

…and found now only the old red-with-gray-bordered optic filter that he wore for years before that whole Avengers-clashing altercation; checking himself out even more thoroughly, he discovered he was indeed again in the navy-blue-with-gold-trim outfit which he wore during the Astonishing Era as formulated by the Governor of Wheedington, about five to ten years ago our time at this writing.

"Well, Scott," began Emma, as she slapped a pallid palm against Summers's chest a few times herself, in a belated effort of her own to relieve him of some more soot, "the interns and I, we never would have guessed that it was really you in there. Good thing we heard you coughing; else you would have become our next auricon."

"Your next what?"

"Oh…" Emma took a second to shake her head most condescendingly, taking in the fact that this man had to be filled in on the situation. In this span Scott started to take stock of the environs all around, specifically of the overly ornate accoutrements adorning this place which for a good number of years in semi-exile he used to call home.

It was none other than the splashed-down Asteroid M, the unusual asylum on the American West Coast known to mutants as Utopia.

But looking upon all the isle's spires and other superstructures, Scott could not recall the place ever looking quite so…gold and gaudy. "What have you done with the place, Emma?" escaped from his lips before he could debate whether to say it, or even before the overarching mindset resurfaced that he was no longer on Earth but in a much more Infernal kind of atmosphere—where reigned reflections of places in one's existence that were altered into the worst sort of distortions.

The beauteous yet baneful blonde looked upon her once-lover anew. "Coveting and converting, my good man," came her cryptic reply. "Coveting and converting."

Somewhere nearby, Scott could hear the unmistakable energy signature of a certain cruel Master of Magnetism, and he set himself a bit more on guard.

"You see, down here…people such as your oldest foe Magneto and myself—not to mention other, slightly more obscure mutants, such as the very selfish Von Strucker Fenris twins—we all can chase some of what were, in life, our wildest dreams. You always knew damn well that I, for one, came from money…and I lost out on most of that money when I struck out and rebelled against my clan in order to seek other kinds of fortune in my youth.

"That venture paid off for a while…but at times I felt the squeeze, and it was never pleasant when it visited me.

Emma continued her spiel as she strolled past a golden statue of a young woman whose facial features resembled her own. Scott could swear he recalled that this old flame of his had some siblings…

"See, like my sister Adrienne here," the once-White Regent went on, "I had to beg her for funds when I was strapped while in charge of Generation X back in the 1990s…put me and my students in a VERY comfortable position, and I had to end up shooting my sis, myself, in the end. I resolved after that time that I would NEVER be placed in that kind of pickle again, Scott.

"And whether it was in life, or here and now in the hereafter, I'm still decided on evading that fate. So here, my eyes have constantly been on that prize of self-reliance…no matter what the cost."

Cyclops gandered all around him, took note of several more statues in the likenesses of certain individuals he had encountered long ago…and whom, as far as he knew, had been long deceased by the time of his own passing. Devlin Greystone, a crazed kind of terrorist from some alternate future, who was destroyed in an aircraft at the same time Scott's brother Alex was caught in the same explosion, but sent into an alternate Earth as captured in the series Mutant X…Bastion, a glorified Sentinel who tried to wipe out mutants most robotically on a worldwide scale on more than one occasion…

Scott was still staring very intently at all these petrified personages when Miss Frost suddenly, abruptly pulled him away. As the man's gaze swept to reach the eyes of Emma once more, he couldn't help but notice several small printouts all over the floor, each of which had a huge six-letter word in white printed brazely against a red rectangular background.

"Ahh," said the wily White woman, grinning fiendishly upon Scott's acknowledgment of the strewn papers, "you see the whole picture now. What you are presently beholding are the host of notices of payment for the invoices we've sent out to our one and only, best client.

"See, for so long in this place in eternity, we've been working with the entity which you, perhaps, would be the greatest threat to the integrity of our outfit. All of us…Magneto, myself, the Struckers…all this time down here, we've been in league with none other than the Machine itself."

Scott's enormously-frazzled brow crinkled at this. "I don't understand."

"The ones who made us from beyond, Scott. The authorial, editorial bastards who had borne us into being. They worked out a deal with us down here; it's perfect, especially because there's no better place for it. I mean, where better than the Fourth Circle…to break the Fourth Wall, right?

"What we're doing in this place is nothing more than pursuing the single greatest passions of our lives: aggregation and accumulation. I've always wanted more and more, of the most material things. So, certainly, have the Struckers, in their own spoiled wealth…and Erik, or Max, or whatever the hell 'real name' Magneto uses now anymore…he always wanted so much more, but in slightly less than currency terms, given that it was really land he coveted, such as Asteroid M, or Avalon/Providence, or any of those other landforms which he always grabbed for while on his mortal coil.

"In order to get what we covet from the Machine, what we have to do is convert. Simply put, we're taking the bodies and souls of the dearly departed from our universe, encasing them in gold as collectible figures, and selling them off. The commissions we get from these pieces of Mutant Meat Merchandise line our pockets, and help us get more and more stuff as we go. As I said before, Scott…

"I won't allow myself to be put in that desperate position I was in with Adrienne again. And if I have to sell my soul…" And then the woman walked up to the statue of her own sister and knocked on one of the shoulders, "…or hers, to secure myself in my little fixation, then I'll do those things."

Scott's countenance crawled with incredulity. "And where do I come in, in all of this?" He figured his soul was relevant somewhere in the picture here, as he would not have been sent here otherwise.

"Well, one other way in which we're all profiting down here, in our myriad transactions with the Machine, is through the endless stream of episodes and titles that the X-Franchise has generated, and continues to generate, throughout the eons. You see, unlike the more…finite mediums, such as those of the film or the regular book, the comic book series…doesn't exactly have to end. Especially with an angle such as ours…in which we're all mutants, which means change, which means constant evolution and growth growth growth…all of us can just keep pumping out adventures into infinity, and lots of readers and other consumers out there will never, ever get tired of it.

"Where you come in is that you go out for us and, as the late John Proudstar would say, 'punch a few heads for Xavier'…(God, Proudstar…we're gonna get a really good deal on that golden goodbody, by the way)…anyway, you go out and fight evil, it gets posted and published as exploits for Issues 700 through 1700 of Uncanny X-Men—Volume 26, of course. And ALL the spinoffs and splinter titles from there…my GOD.

"We've gone from Uncanny to Astonishing to Amazing…gone past using adjectives in front of the franchise into adverbs and prepositions…the most fun ones, really, have been the interjections. I'm telling you, Scott, 'Shit! The X-Men' and 'Damn! The X-Men' were some of the best things we've put out in a long, long epoch or two down here.

"But once a hero we're in control of doesn't want to do it anymore…we retire them…and they share the fate of those you know have been long dead. See, I've even lost track of _you_ down here all this time, in my bid to beg, borrow, and steal for as much stuff as I can amass in this Circle. When the Machine transactional interns and I found you down here just now, we'd thought you had opted for the retirement route. Thought you'd wanted to become an icon in gold, for sale to Marvel…an auric icon, or 'auricon' as we call them most jauntily.

"If it turns out, though, that you want to jump back into the fray…go right ahead. I'm sure that 'Crap! The X-Men' could use a good leader in there…"

"Fuck the X-Men."

Emma paused at Scott's reply. "No…Nightcrawler's already in those pages, running that group."

"I'm not talking about being in one of your 'interjection' Machine titles, Emma. I am not down here to go around in circles, chasing that 'dream' any longer. There's something much, MUCH greater than adventure—or if you could believe it, profit—which I'm pursuing down here."

The White One, with her hair of glimmering greed-glutting gold (which had matched the petty-acquisition platinum of Magneto's own mane, to balance matters out between the genders here), she just looked back at the Clops in utter incomprehension at this.

"Yes, of course you wouldn't understand, Emma. I wouldn't take you as one to do so…"

"You know, you're not even worth encasing in gold, Scott. You would make a maricon (as the epithet goes in Spanish) of an auricon. No way would you stack up to the Wolverine Figurine that we hawked off a few years back…you would never fetch any kind of sum like that.

"In fact, sooner than make you into a sellable icon, I'd sell off my prized possession: the corpse-stuffed-in-gold-straw which I've made of Age-of-Apocalypse Jean Grey. She's my own personal effigy…which I appropriately call Effin' Jean. Whenever I feel a bit hollow in all my pursuits down here…I just light her up…and it's so wonderful, because instead of her most magnificent, fiery incarnation, in which she burns again only to live again, and burns again only to live again, and burns again only to live again…here, she lives again only to BURN AGAIN, and lives again only to BURN AGAIN, and lives again only to BURN AGAIN…which perhaps, in fact, I could go and make also out of y…"

Emma became so caught up in her mania here that she closed her eyes tightly in her avaricious ecstasy, not noticing that Scott had already put a decent distance between himself and her person in the last several seconds. "Scott?"

The man now stood next to a gigantic tapestry, standing fifty feet tall, which collected the #1 Issue covers of every X-Title ever. In Cyclops's right hand was the chisel with which Andreas Strucker had carved the Greystone auricon.

"I'm through with being part of any of this, Emma," the man said with stoic conviction. "I'm not adventuring anymore, not to line your pockets, or Erik/Max's, or anyone's in the Machine.

"You know…a lot of these Circles down here…they feature vices that reflect the deadly sins. Lust, Gluttony, Greed…well, you know what? From what I remember of the Divine Comedy, there was at least one deadly sin not captured in a Circle of Hell…something of which I might have been found guilty of late…

"…SLOTH." Scott turned the chisel over and over in his hand, as Emma took a step forward. "I'm really lazy anymore, in my old age, Emma. I'm just not feeling up to…punching heads for anyone, anymore. So I'm out."

Emma quickened her steps and started to place her fingers to her temples, in a vain attempt to subjugate the Summers's mind, but he would abscond far out of range before she could reach him. The Greed and Gluttony and all the other gloomy, glum G words got the man down, so he decided to embrace other, giddier and goofier G's as he thrust the chisel into the tapestry next to him.

The word "Sloth" sped through his mind once more as he jumped at the tapestry and started raking down the length of it with the tool as he fell, Scott invoking the iconic quote and imitating the iconic act near the end of a Mid-Eighties cinematic youth's epic which was uttered by a deformed hero with the same name as the lazy vice:

"HEEYYYYYYYYY YOOOOOUUUUU GUUUUUYYYYYYSSSSSS!"

And here, the "Guys" in mind for whom Scott called were none other, of course, than the beloved wife and son whom he was endeavoring so desperately to reach, in another several Circles below. As the man disappeared into a small, dark fissure just beneath the bottom of the tapestry, Emma sighed and mused to herself.

"You want to talk deadly sins, Scott…

"You're headed right for what might be the most dangerous of them all."

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. Irateness or Oasis?

AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS

CIRCLE FIVE, ANGER: IRATENESS OR OASIS?

Jets whished out streams of air, puffing and buffeting against Scott's face, as the man slowly came to. His eyes blinked absently a couple of times, then resumed firing their regular red runs against the ruby quartz lenses positioned only an inch away.

_You're awake again, Scott,_ said the ethereal Virgilistic voice of Nathan Christopher Summers, Cyclops's son and his spirit guide throughout this entire afterlife journey. _That's good. I don't think they were expecting you to be back from oblivion this soon. You can get your thoughts together before it all starts up now._

_What's going to start up?_ In the back of his mind, the man thought about how this was the hump Circle, how after this it was all going to be downhill from here.

Hopefully.

(Or actually, "hope-less-ly" was the more desired kind of future for Scott, as he wished not to deal with anyone of the name or anyone acting like her of late…)

_ I can hear you in there, Dad…I can feel the wheels turning within your brain, wondering who it's going to be this time. You don't have to worry about any happenin' Hopes or joltin' Jeans here…_

At this, Scott managed a deep breath of relief.

_ …there's just yet another redhead who's kind of been itching to get at you. In any case, you'll see her soon enough. Keep in mind that this part of your Infernal trip represents arguably the worst of the deadly sins which apply to the Circles: it's Anger, Dad. Something which runs pretty strongly within the Summers clan. _

_I mean, believe me: I've known my way around indignation too. And Mom, well…it was rage that had killed her, initially. All that time involving the demons way back when…her hunger for revenge, which she took out on so many people (many who deserved it, but still)…all that rage, it destroyed only herself in the end, and none of the people or other entities she targeted._

_Ma knows all about that anger. Heh, I guess it's apropos, sort of given her name: You just can't spell "Madelyne" without "Mad," I suppose._

_But she's certainly not "Mad" as in "Crazy," Dad. She's been dealing with a lot down here as well, particularly from the damage she caused in her own times of Anger. Mom's just as much in the trenches as you are._

_Anyway…she wants to see you again, Scott. I want us all to reunite in the end, and I know the both of you feel the same way. In doing time down here, she made something nice, and she told me to give it to you. So here._

Although the form of Cable was basically holographic, what he was carrying was very tangible, and as Scott looked at the small booklet Nathan Christopher gave over, placed close to the man's face as he was still situated inside of some small, space-age pod, a few tears began to well up in his eyes.

It was a brochure for Reindeer Falls, a small resort in Alaska—the place where he and Maddy had their first date. Scott looked dorky but dapper in his dark shirt and blue tie; Madelyne might have appeared a bit too poofy in her puffy yellow dress…but that evening was the greatest fantasy the man had ever lived in his long, long existence. Nothing he and Jean ever did came anywhere close to matching it. To say nothing about anyone else with whom Mister Summers had ever had a bond with.

The pamphlet alternated in shades of tan, brown, and white, to reflect the hues of a reindeer's fur. On the very front, though, in the depiction of the sky above the lodge, a circle was drawn near the top that was bordered and shaded in red. The proverbial "Rudolph's Nose" of the Reindeer.

Inside the circle, written vividly in green: BE MINE.

Scott melted at this, a rivulet of tears escaping from both of his ruby lenses. He heard a sound from about twenty feet from his pod, and hastily placed the de facto valentine inside the navy-blue-and-gold-trim outfit he seemed to still have on in this Circle.

[KSSSHHHNNNNNN]

Just as he finished fitting the paper pleasure within his accoutrements, the shielding of his pod lifted open and the man beheld the one responsible for his placement within it.

"So you've finally come to…Scott."

The reddish triangles along the outer contours of her round face gave her away all too easily.

"…Rachel. It's good to see you again."

The scarlet-follicled spacefarer stared at Scott for a good several seconds, then looked down and nodded slightly. "Yeah…it's nice." She was all decked out in her tough red-and-yellow jacketsuit, the one which was most familiar to readers on the other side of the narrative's wall nowadays. One of her hands was curling up into a fist…but it was shaking too much for it to be taken as a threat.

Scott took a deliberate, careful breath before speaking again. "Look. I know where this is. I mean, first of all I know it's one of the Starjammer ships and all…but what I mean is, I know where I am, in the larger picture of things, and what I'm supposed to be doing here.

"All I have to say is…I don't want to fight. In any way imaginable. I know I caused you a limitless amount of hurt, with what I did regarding Jean so long ago. I am doing all I can now to set things right.

[TSSSHHHHHH]

"Rachel…if I have to go down on my knees to say it, I am endlessly sorry fo-uggh…"

Cyke tripped as he tried to take a step outside of the pod, which he just propped open a little more to let himself out most awkwardly. From all the years he had spent on Earth, in the latest periods of his life, and then especially from all the time he had spent in his own personal Limbo alone in Anchorage, the man had indeed been too anchored on solid ground to appreciate what it was like to be out in the void once again…it took him time to regain his space legs.

As he was doing so, Rachel: "I can't…I cannot begin to try to verbalize how much hurt you have caused m…"

"OH, SO BIG BROTHER'S FINALLY GONE AND AWAKENED, HAS HE?!"

A quick shot of a plasma blast spanged against a locker from the far doorway to the chamber.

Thus before Miss Grey could articulate a collected response, she was interrupted, in more ways than one, by her most uncouth uncle.

"Alex," she said, turning to the blazing blond bursting in, "let me talk to him. You can't…"

"God DAMN you, Scott," spat the younger Summers brother, as he ignored Rachel and shook a charging, clenched hand at his elder sibling. "You've really managed to WRECK every relation you've come into contact with. You messed with Madelyne to no end with your runaround escapades in the Eighties—which I've NEVER forgiven you for, ESPECIALLY because you KNOW you could have done FAR, FAR more for her…and then…"

"I DID ALL I COULD, AFTER…" Scott tried to mount a counterattack of a response, to meet his brother's assault…but he knew he was too guilty of the offense alleged him to be able to fight back effectively.

"You deserve all the pain and agony you're going through, Scott." Alex took a step towards his sibling, and the raucous, round bands of yellow energy intensified within him.

"You want to go through some CIRCLES…here, with my concentrically concentrated plasmic signature, I can send some circles to go through YOU…"

"That's ENOUGH, Alex!"

And the younger Summers brother indeed relented, once he witnessed the enflamed Phoenix emblem appear over Rachel's left eye.

"You've made your point. Now leave me, with your brother, to…drive it home."

Alex looked at his alternate-reality niece with simmering bitterness. Then he backed off. "Fine. But if there's anything left of him when you're through…I get dibs."

Rachel said nothing as she watched the Uncanny and later Avenging Havok haul his sorehead ass through the doorway he barreled through a moment ago. She then trained her eyes on Scott again.

"Scott," she started, squeezing her eyes shut tight, "I'm…I'm not going to give in to it. I'm not going to blow up at you…get all fierce and fiery like your brother did just now."

Cyclops just looked at the redoubtable redhead and nodded.

"I'm still pretty livid with you, though; can't deny that. I mean…why, Scott?

"Why did you hurt Jean, like you did? Why, too, with Madelyne…why do you hurt people, the way you do?

"I just can't get my hands around any kind of palpable, acceptable reason that you resort to such, stratagems as those. The great leader on the field that you are…and yet, to make such terrible decisions in other…arenas…"

Scott measured Rachel as the other fixed a lingering, accusatory glare upon him, her fists still shaking, more out of frustration than fury. He considered at length what he was going to say, and then he spoke. "Rachel; you're totally right. Of all the people to confront me here, in this place, and beyond the women with whom I had the actual relationships…I am completely without surprise that it would be you. I know that of everyone, you were the one who had expressed the greatest outcry when I hurt Jean, back a few years after the millennium. You were the most outspoken, with the most outrage.

"And you have always, always been one vigintillion percent correct about it. I was a complete ingrate, an imbecile who never knew the fabulous, magical boon that he had in the love of a magnificent woman, until he let it slip from his grasp. And for it to have happened to me twice!...it boggles the mind how much of a fucking idiot I was in my life."

"You need to understand, oh fearless leader, that you can't just hurt these ladies and just move on…there's gotta be some reckoning at some point."

"I've basically learned that lesson at least four times now, Rachel. Believe me. And after this, I've got another four to go.

"Believe me, when I get to where I'm going…I will take all the lumps that're coming to me. I will get on my knees and serve her till the end of time and beyond. For what I did to my wife…I will let her do whatever she wants to me, whatever punishment she wishes to visit upon me, for all time.

"And I know I got it coming to me…indeed, it is long overdue for the woman of my dreams to kick my optic ass."

Even though this was the place of Anger, Rachel let slip a small snicker at Scott's words. There was always that charm about this man who was her father, at least in some reality, and the lover of so many unbelievably earthshattering women.

"You know…and I'm trying, Rachel…it's still Rachel Grey as of now, isn't it?"

"Yeah…well, actually, I was so mad at you that I was thinking of cleaving to my last name to the point of even calling myself 'Ray Grey'…but then it's like, I've gone and reduced myself to fucking…Pig Latin or something…"

Scott smiled; shared a smile with his alternate-life-but-aligned-afterlife daughter. Maybe this steppe in Hell, as deep as it was, was some kind of weird oasis…even though it was arguably the deadliest of sins. The eye of the hurricane, perhaps?

"As I was saying a second ago, I'm trying, really hard now, down here…I'm doing all I can, making sacrifices of time and suffering, through so many trials, trying to make it up, to make it all right. The ones who I'm fighting for here…they love me, and they're pulling for me all the way. And I know I'm going to do them proud, and get there, and everything's going to be alright."

Rachel nodded. "But you CAN'T make any more mistakes, Scott. I won't let you. You'll have to answer to ME."

"I hear you; and the second I were to stray, I would come right up here, to answer to you. I swear on that. I will not abide anyone in my family—anyone at all—being hurt on account of what I do, ever again."

The daughter of another universe's Phoenix allowed herself again to grin in this miserable Circle. "Da…I mean, Scott…I'm sure that, when you get there…when you reach your wife finally, it's going to be wonderful."

"I think so."

"I mean…it'll be a real release. I'm sure your universe's Jean will receive you with the warmest of embraces, and things will go back to normal, once you've done all your time down here."

Scott just returned the statement with an empty look for a second; then he straightened himself up. "Umm…yes. It's going to be great. I plan to make my wife very happy…and I will give her all of my time and love, the rest of eternity."

At least the What of it was true, if not the Who that Rachel expected.

"Well…I don't want to keep you, then. You really have to be on your way."

"Thanks, Rachel."

And then the younger Phoenix got up and threw in arm in the direction of the doorway through which she and Alex had alighted, indicating that that was the direction in which Scott should be headed next. The man started along when he was suddenly clotheslined.

By a hug from the girl. The latter-day Marvel Girl held her father tightly, sobbed angry tears as she hammered on the sides of his arms lightly with loosely balled fists. "I'm so fucking P.O.'d at you, Dad…"

Then she held him from a foot away. "But I still love you."

"And I love you, my daughter."

Cyclops and this later Phoenix looked into one another's kindred eyes for a beat longer, then embraced. Even the middle of Hell couldn't distort bonds of love that were that strong.

She guided her papa through to a teleporter which was supposed to take him to the next Circle.

Scott turned as he remembered something.

"Oh, Rachel…"

"Yes?"

"You see your mom anytime soon…tell her she needs to cut down on the dwarf and giant stars. She's been a wonderful lady…and she looks great…it's just that, well, I've heard those things can be bad to take down after a fashion."

"I'll tell her. I think those stars all go to her ass after a fashion, anyway."

A beat.

"Hey Dad…what in this Hell's a 'vigintillion,' anyway?"

"It's ten to the sixty-third power. …I, uhh…spent a lot of time online…in my own personal First Circle. Looked up a lot of things. Useless ones for the most part, but…you know how it is up there."

Rachel sniffed a small laugh, then another as she thought about her mother, who was the Alien Clone Phoenix of another reality, and her father. Perhaps, if not take the name Summers again…she would call herself Rachel S Grey, with the "S" an intriguing Scottish/Irish thing, used by some notable individuals such as Harry S Truman, the letter not necessarily connoting any one name but many, or none at all. Here it could be "Summers," but it could also be "Super" or "Spacey" or who knew. She had all the time in eternity to think about it.

Scott collected his thoughts as he started for the teleporter. He knew that lying to her alternate daughter wasn't the more straight-laced thing to do, and hopefully he wouldn't be penalized for it somehow…he just figured that since he was in Anger, he didn't want to rock any boats, or Starjammer ships for that matter, regarding who exactly the fair maiden was at the end he was going to rescue—or really, who was going to rescue him, given that Madelyne had done more than her fair share of helping with everything from scrapple platters to soothing pamphlets.

The man mused some more on all of this just as he was about to step into the matter transporting unit, and just as his brother Alex stepped once again into the chamber to raise his hands, charge up his own personal "circles" once more, and blast Scott straight through the far wall of the ship and abruptly into the bleak reaches of outer space.

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. An Apostasy of Causes and Coiffures

AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS

CIRCLE SIX, HERESY: AN APOSTASY OF CAUSES AND COIFFURES

Probably ten minutes later or so, there was still nothing but space surrounding Cyclops. He gyrated endlessly and aimlessly, the man ceasing to understand which way was up and even what his purpose was anymore in all this. Planets passed by him at an abnormally fast rate, and in a distant corner of his mind, Scott knew that such velocity on his own part could not be possible.

_ Tkkka tkk tkk…tkkka tkk tkk…_

It sounded as if the "transmission" from Scott's son was having difficulty reaching the man, as splayed out into space as the latter was. It was really from all the spinning that father and son could not connect exceptionally well at first.

Finally, after a another several bodily rotations on Scott's part: _God, Dad…I didn't remember you to be so…pliable in outer space. Thought you were a bit more solid than that._

_ Nathan, I'm just so…old…not really into the whole extremeness of physicality that my job has demanded all these centuries._

_ I read you, Dad. Well, you'll be happy to know that after this Circle, we'll be two-thirds of the way there. Keep on sticking it out and we'll all be a family again, you, me, and Mom…_

_ …Yeah, you know, speaking of "Circles"…am I in orbit around some planet or something? I'm feeling the pull of some heavenly body, but I can't get a bead on what it is…_

_ Honestly, if there's any heavenly body involved here, it's that of your first and best spouse, Scott…and I don't mean that in some creepy, Freudian Oedipal way, of course._

_ Keep thinking of Madelyne…Dadelyne…_

In the reaches of the underworld here, even someone as heavy-hardass as fucking Cable could give in to a bit of giddiness, reverse psychologically.

_ You have a worse sense of "funny"…or at least "punny"…than I do, Nate._ Scott turned his body all around in this space, wondering just at the fact that he could still breathe, pondering what his next destination would be…or perhaps Mephisto just grew tired of playing with him, forgot all about him…

_ We're definitely headed towards something major, Scott. This Circle's all about Heresy, the idea of some set of brazen beliefs flying in the face of another grouping of values that are much steadier and really matter. Conflicting systems are what this one's all about. Do you remember any times when said systems were at play in your life?..._

_ …say, for instance, when you had certain sets of obligations that were at odds with one another?..._

_ To get through here, you need to consider where you went wrong, in determining which of the two pulls on you, at a critical time with Mom…which of the two was the true path…and which was the heresy. Be careful on this one._

Just as the man's hapless form was careening ever so rapidly towards an existence-obliterating meteor shower…the entire illusion of outer space faded and the lights of Scott's longstanding team training chamber came on again.

He really had been out of practice with all of this. Scott reached over and lost his lunch while another major lady from his life, in a sense, strolled on up to stand above him.

"Been a bit too long since you've been going through the exercises, would you say?"

"Oh, Ororo…" [BLEAAAHHH]

"Let it out, Scott…let it all out. I know it's been tough, what with all the competing concerns you've had going on as of late.

The lady ran her fingers through the white follicular ripple streaking across her scalp that was her Mohawk. "Your need to support a family. The possibility of using your talents for profit, by becoming a mutant hunter. Oh, I know of all of that. The Professor and I have been talking, you know."

Cyke noticed that he had those old yellow gloves on again…noticed too that he was wearing the old school dark-blue-with-yellow-effects costume that defined him during the All-New, All-Different era. The togs that constantly were on his back, whether he was leading the Originals or those relative whippersnappers of the Second Genesis.

"Charles doesn't think you have what it takes to be his best…administrator anymore, in his school, Scott. He thinks you've given up the Dream, for something far more…frivolous."

"That's because Charles doesn't know what it means to have a family…and by that I mean a real family," Scott managed from his prone place on the Mansion's Danger Room floor. God, but he hated New York anymore…too many bitter memories—especially in light of anything and everything that happened with his first, best spouse. "You know, not like, an ad hoc one of soldiers and such...rather a flesh-and-blood one, with a husband and a wife and children. He never knew anything like that."

"And _that's_ because Xavier made such sacrifices in his life, Scott, giving up such humble, stable pleasures so that he could strive for those who were oppressed everywhere."

Storm strode over to the far end of the room, then raised her arms to hover Mohawk-first up to the window near to where the controls were. She gave a signal to the Professor, who was on the side of the glass and watching both of his most prized leaders very carefully.

"Believe me…and you know this damn well, such that I shouldn't have to tell you…Charles could have had his choice of any lady he desired. Could have sired tens, if not hundreds of Xaviers—beyond David, and Future Battle-Atomic Xavier, and everyone else we know in his progeny."

Yeah, because those fuckers are so God damn functional, Cyke thought to himself. But he remained silent for the moment.

"Anyway, Scott," Ororo went on, "we're not here to jabber on until the Final Judgment. We here at the Institute have got a good, final exam for you…and you'll find that it'll put you in a bit of a dilemma. But more on that in a moment.

"Do you recall the one time, a few months before the Mutant Massacre, when the two of us met like this…?"

Scott nodded. "Of course. It was the infamous duel we underwent, to determine who would become the head of the team. WHO WILL LEAD THEM…with the big red question mark in the top left corner, I remember it very vividly."

Storm ignored her conversant's metacomment and acknowledged Xavier's working a few settings on Danger Room control. "I'm certain you remember all the stakes that were in play…"

Cyclops responded only by staring at the lady, knowing full well of all to which she was referring. The throwdown between him and Storm was not only about who was the most competent, but also who was the most relevant—Scott never wishing to let go, from the time Charles first appointed him official leader, to a lengthy period thereafter, never wishing to relinquish the opportunity to be in charge of the Children of the Atom. The death of someone very dear, or at least the semblance of her, was the first thing that ever drove him away from the responsibility.

The second happenstance was a birth, a couple of births in fact—of a shared life between spouses, of a new third life between them. And Scott's allegiances lay not in the camp of those births, but rather in the incessant mission for mutantdom which the man assumed year in and year out. It took the phenomenon of his being forced out—through the bout for leadership with Ororo—for Scott to finally give up and walk away again.

As such, it was not, at that time, that Scott chose to be with Madelyne and Nathan Christopher…he was just shunted into it by default.

Scott noticed that the plain, pasty walls of the Room shifted to a shimmering sapphire sky against ivory mountains.

"So about that dilemma," Ororo went on, levitating herself towards the center of the chamber. "It's gonna be a real squall of a quandary that you'll find yourself in.

"You lose here, against me now as you did last time—and me, without even any powers then—you'll be trapped in this chamber for a very, _very_ long time, forced _in_ here to perform exercises in the name of Xavier and his Dream…just as you were forced _out_ of here before, through our duel all those years ago.

"You win here…you then have to decide between your wife and child…and ever seeing any of us ever again, at least in the context of going on missions. You will be forced into retirement forever and ever, coerced and cursed to dull, mundane Madelyne family life till the end of time."

Scott had already made his decision between the two options before Ororo had even finished speaking. He never forgot who was pulling for him the most, and for whom he was pushing in turn.

As she settled into an aerial battle pose, Storm spoke once more. "This bout will straighten you out, Scott…make you remember which was the cause that was most worth fighting for…and which was the false calling for your life's work."

"Interesting to hear so much invective against falsity and heresy…from someone who spent a fair amount of time impersonating a goddess in Kenya."

At this Ororo's face wrenched into full-bore fury.

"You motherf…BEGIN!"

The lady wanted to strike Scott down, then and there, with a fast bolt of her most joltin-juice…but she knew that he was baiting her, in a way…just as so many down here were doing the same to him. Scott was smartening up a bit like that.

At any rate, the two had at one another, Storm sending down hail to strike at Scott, the latter charging amidst it to reach safer ground and then firing back a shot to sail over the woman's head. A typhoon then originated within Ororo, which whirled at Cyclops, who propelled himself away by firing into the ground and pushing off from the floor that way. While in midair, Scott leveled another blast at Storm, which apparently missed once again as it flew over the lady's noggin.

"My man, you _are_ out of practice," shot Storm as she reached within herself for the fiercest of her lightnings to strike out once more. A slight sensation welled within her, that her head was starting to feel…heavier for some reason, but she dismissed it for the time being.

Meanwhile, on the ground again, Scott looked to the faux sierra in the "distance" and mused about Maddy once more. This fake Canada (which was most likely an improvement on the real one…just bustin' chops, Northern Neighbors), with its serene scapes, brought to mind another snowy locale which was too near and dear to his heart—and the man pretended to be there instead, while battling it out with the barometrically-based babe in his little scuffle at present. As he continued to dodge, he looked too at the superbly stunning Storm, noticed through his continual "misses" of optic blasts that what proudly crowned her was increasing in its area…and it would spell her defeat in the ensuing instants.

Scott jumped past some natural, precipitation-based obstacles launched his way as he continued to contemplate how, after all, his adversary's abilities thrived on the darkening of the sky, and the attendant turbulent circumstances…while Cyke's own solar-powered talents prospered most when it was sunny. He and Ororo were real opposites of opponents in that way.

And when the sun's rays shined, the man phrased mentally, you know it makes everything…grow…

About six or seven minutes and a dozen optic blasts sailed above Ororo's head later, the latter had her man cornered by a fake, reflecting lake at the edge of the Danger chamber.

"I hope you have your second concession speech prepared, Scott…for this twice of times that I will have defeated you."

"Ororo…Goddess of the High Hors…, I mean, Winds…"

And this set the lady on gritted edge again, she wishing so badly to savor her impending victory but distracted again by Scott's carping at her.

"The problem with you is that you've always let too much go to your head…"

Then with this Scott shot a glance, literally with his laser optics, down the length of the lake.

"As you can plainly SEE!"

Storm instantly looked down, to divine what, in literal Hell, Scott was doing. She caught the red beam rushing through the water, then the ripple effect that parted the waters a second.

What she then espied made her jaw drop and her hands fly to the top of her head.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

(Okay, so this author made fun of Mackiechusetts in his "Illin'" story for all the Adam Sandler "NOOOOOs"…Tou-effin-ché).

She could feel the wonderous white wisps of hair down the center of her head…

…as well as on each side, making for once more a full head of sumptuous, snowy hair.

"You are effectively helpless now, Storm—you dare not continue to function in any capacity without the irritatingly-undying decades-dead trend of Mohawk atop your head—a Mohawk which has now effectively been LOST in the shuffle of so many shocks of hair!

"Our duel…is over."

Thus, just as with that one-on-one so many years ago, in which Ororo had emerged victorious through relieving the most critical implement of a visor from Scott's cranium, so too had Cyclops taken a triumph from Storm by doing the same.

In a sense. At any rate, the miserable Mohawk subsided once again into the lovely sea of the weather lady's hair. The stylish do had its place, at one time…but not unlike the Outback adventures which it preceded, it was a finite time, and for it to be brought back now, and repeatedly, and forever, was to force it, not unlike so many horror film remakes that go under the radar; or resurfacings of has-been musicians, on tour for no one to care about; or…basically any major trope of the Machine, whether mutant-based or not, from the "leaving the team with a bag over the shoulder" covers to the "faux Fall of the Mutants bodies-draped-over-each-other-pseudo-peacefully" covers to the "Welcome to the X-Men: Hope you surv…hope you go and fucking eat my ass" introductory semi-taunts that completely don't come up again and again every seventeen issues. The constant reemerging of Storm's strident hairstyle was a…Mohawkrocosm, of all that.

Completely flustered at the moment, in any case, the aforesaid stridently-'styled lady lowered herself to the floor as the Danger Room reverted to its usual bone-hued backdrop.

"Okay," she said, finally, after wringing her hands for a few minutes. "I…concede defeat. Undoubtedly now, Charles and I and the others will all answer to you, as you begin to formulate another attack plan against the most recent and fearsome of our foes…"

"No."

Scott knew that another artifice would be played against him right away, and like the skillful leader that he was, the man was ready for it. He spoke loudly enough for those involved to hear. "I'm…I've decided not to play this game, anymore. Ororo, Charles…what you've offered here was something far more noble, in adventuring…something far more on-the-level and for-the-thing-in-itself than what was offered to me a couple of levels up…with 'Crap! The X-Men' and what have you."

This last was met by a whimsical look of incomprehension from Storm; apparently one Circle didn't always know what the next was doing, down here. "Anyway…I am certain that at this juncture, you want this much more than I do, Ororo. I myself have a far greater mission to accomplish, a far loftier cause I need to serve, a far nobler quest I must see through.

"I thereby step aside and give the leadership of the X-Men back to you, Goddess of the High Winds."

As the man finished, Storm looked to him grimly, then nodded. "We all wish you luck, then, Scott, with wherever your mission, cause, and quest may take you."

"Thank you, Ororo."

Instants after the Bright Lady pointed the way for Cyclops, through a door whose middle broke open into halves like the sides of a vicious bear trap, the man thought to himself on what kept him going just now, through the heat of the fight. It wasn't a need to lead others. It wasn't to mindlessly follow the message of a Dream anymore.

Pondering on what Madelyne went through…her having the baby alone, without him being there to help her as he should have…recognizing the need to be there for her now, and to serve her and Nathan Christopher forever—that was what kept the man from failing and falling into an infinitude of Danger Room sessions upon his impending defeat just moments ago.

And with his lady love's strength, his son's counsel, and some Longshotlike or Domino-donated luck…Scott just might make it through to see his wife and son and be one as a family once more.

TO BE CONTINUED


	7. Bounties and Barbarities

AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS

CIRCLE SEVEN, VIOLENCE: BOUNTIES AND BARBARITIES

Expecting to traverse a hallway of a mansion, Scott found himself in the next instant crossing the threshold of a hangar. Where in the literal blazes was he now?

_Nathan Christopher?_

_Chris?..._

Neither the image nor the ever-attendant voice of Cyke's surly son materialized. All Scott could hear, could feel now, in place of that sturdy, steadying inflection, was

_[IHH IHH IHH IHH IHH IHH]_

the sound of very light, shallow breathing.

Almost the kind of sound the breaths of a baby would make.

Scott walked hurriedly on ahead, the man worried as to his uncertainty regarding his present position…then tripped into a mix of relief and disconcertion when he caught sight of a very familiar bundle cooped up atop a crate about thirty meters away.

The man quickened in his step as he approached what he was sure was his son Nathan as an infant again, the boy swaddled in a diaper and a sky blue blanket. Cyclops reflected as he got closer that he could not remember ever setting the child of such a strange metallic plate as that which lay underneath the baby as of now.

He discovered the disc's purpose a moment later as, upon his getting within ten feet

[WHHHISSSHHH]

the little whippersnapper on a platter was thrust away from him by some energy superhuman. The circular metal support underneath Nathan quivered eerily as the boy floated through the air; then rested as Scott's face tightened at the source of the foreign force.

"Why're you in such a rush, Scotty?

"It's the afterlife…"

And then the man could do nothing as the floor at his feet—which he realized just now was made from a most metalloid alloy—coughed up all around him and hugged him close.

"…you've got all the time in the underworld."

It was not the 'Men's most magnetic foe, but rather his daughter.

No. It wasn't her, either. Not really.

Scott recalled faintly from the sheeny smile and the peaked peridot hairstyle that this was not in fact Lorna Dane, not in fact Polaris pumping towards him, with his child on a tray levitating before her, but in fact the twisted counterpart to the lady.

Malice.

And said twisting was nothing due to the woman's own orchestrations—Lorna, in fact, was just as innocent before her possession as Summers was at the moment. The fact of the matter now, however, was that the lady standing before him was wicked. Just as wicked, in fact…

…as the compatriots falling in to flank on either side of her.

"Nothing really personal, Scotty," Malice continued, her cruel white smile as bleeding bulbs of corrupt light across her lips, "you've just been traveling all this time with something our employer wants. He sends his thanks for your safely taking him over here…and now you're gonna get your payment, in full."

Before Scott could say anything in reply, the psychically-invaded Dame Dane twitched the fingers of her left hand, and the man felt his metallic coat tighten all the more. The agony was so extreme in this embrace that it almost made Scott wish for another, much softer (and infinitely sexier) hug five Circles up in its place. Almost.

The hero might have traded his position for the one previous, in actuality, if not for the fact that Nathan Christopher was on his cranium, and Madelyne was on his mind. And he was going to get to them no matter what. This was all just a bit of a bump in the road, that was all.

And a hook to the face.

And a preternaturally rough hand to the chest that wrested him most cogently from his metal mooring, and chucked him most abruptly to the ground. The second bastardliest baldy next to Xavier himself, the Marauder known as Blockbuster, shook most violently in his glee at grabbing Summers and wiping the floor with the hero at will.

He would have executed even more mauling maneuvers, in fact, were it not for a sudden, stoic hand that stayed him. Scott instantly reached for his glasses at the first moment possible and flicked them off, ready to belt out with his blasts.

Nothing whatsoever, no scarlet stream, no beryl beam at all, had emanated from the eyes.

Scott did manage to get a great, full-color glance at Harpoon, however, as the man reared back his aforementioned stoic hand, with eponymous weapon at the ready, and let fly.

One, two, ten such harpoons found their home within the chest of Scott Summers, the man's body being electrified with pain and defeat. Seconds later he slumped full-supine to the floor.

The man did not dream, down here in Hell…at least, not at this substratum of it. He could only writhe in his limitless discomfort, his hands reaching out subconsciously at the air, begging to be brought out of this multitiered marathon of mutilation…

He awakened. Gathering himself up quickly in an upright position, Scott found himself in a hospital bed, the time about twilight. He found he actually had to squint, probably for one of the only times in his life, as his glasses were still off his face, nestled snugly on the corner of the endtable accompanying his cot.

Cyke stretched for the shades…

…then recoiled as he reckoned the slaughtered doctor sitting aside the bed, underneath another window, staring straight out in the stillness of death. Scott looked around frantically to find a nurse in the same condition, she shot several times too just like the physician, her body hunkered down as if the woman were just depressed. In fact, of course, she was as dead as the doctor as a doornail.

The doorknob to the room then turned. Scott thought in his horror to hide, as he dimly remembered that attempting to fight what felt like an instant ago proved utterly futile.

The incoming of Arclight rendered all this academic anyway as she sprinted into the room, then immediately thrust down with her hands at the floor to bring the entire facility down.

About a couple of minutes and several collapsing tons of concrete and other construction materials later, Scott came to once more to find himself trapped between red beams that were, sure as Surge or Sunfire's home was the Land of the Rising Sun, not optic blasts.

Once more, the man could not move a mite bit. He could only register it ruefully as Arclight's arch lover Scalphunter sauntered on in, with souped-up rifle in each hand, and unloaded all his ordnance into the corporeality of the Clops. As each shell agonizingly found home inside Scott's enfeebled frame, a small part of him actually sparked and remembered why this was all so at least vicariously reminiscent of something he once knew.

It was Jean who had told him about it. While the two of them were changing Christopher one time on Ship, during their salad seasons as X-Factor. She recalled Madelyne's past, memories that moseyed into her mind at the close of the Infernal atrocities, and how the put-upon pilot had undertaken what she thought was a flight assignment for a fair assessment, prodigious pay for a simple fling over to San Francisco. Madelyne took the baby with her when she went—as by this juncture Scott had abandoned her home as if Anchorage were a place worse than his orphanage in childhood—and she flew all the way out there, eager for her bundle of booty when she got there.

She was in fact paid, but in bullets to the body instead. Madelyne was hunted down by the murderous mofos known as the Marauders, with Scalphunter serving the most personal of payments upon her. Once she was shot down, said ruthless ruffians dispersed, believing her for dead and nabbing the baby from the lady.

When she turned up alive again, in a hospital in Frisco, the Man behind the Marauders—the one known most saliently as Sinister—commissioned them once more to finish the fiasco they initiated. Madelyne was again tracked by the tumultuous terrors, but this time she was rescued in the clutch by the Pre-Outback Punk-Storm-Shepherded X-Men.

In the depths of the wretched wreckage in which Scott was situated at the moment, the man had absolutely no doubt that such a search party was not on its way to him.

But someone did come for Scott.

"Hey there, Captain Summers."

Cyke looked up suddenly, perked up at the appearance of a young woman who brightened his life for a certain time, very soon after the death of Jean Grey. She was a babe and a looker with her blonde locks, but known much more for her resourcefulness and resolve. The lady was there for him, so soon after the expiration of that reigning redhead, and the good golden lady helped him heal ever so thoroughly from that tragedy.

Scott looked into her wondrous blue eyes as she alighted, and said her brief yet brilliant name.

"…

"…Lee?"

"Yes, Scott."

The lady known as Lee Forrester set herself down next to the still-running remains of the man known as Scott Summers. Her alluring auric follicles were a fair comfort to the hero as he lay struggling and suffering.

She looked pertly at the man when he opened his mouth to speak again, silenced him simply with the item she came to bring him. "I'm here to help you, Scott."

In the woman's hand was a revolver, something very slight and ineffective in comparison to the cannons that Scalphunter was schlepping around. Lee started to give the gun over handle first to Scott.

He looked at the lady sheepishly. "Thanks," he said, just dumbly staring at the weapon's short stock, thinking most Freudianically of its relative meekness in light of the circumstances. "I don't know if this alone would be enough to match the might of the Marau…"

"No, it's not for them."

Scott then looked again at her, his unfiring brown eyes glaring at the unoffending blue irises of Aletys Forrester.

"Who better to bring over such a…solution, for you, Scott. It's easy. Quick. Worked for my father, Jock, when he was down and out of it. This little last resort's been the proverbial bitter pill for a lot of men in my family, in fact.

"Hell, I almost resorted to it myself. My last beau, though—Jim Scully, or Skull, you might know of him—he convinced me to act otherwise. Funny, 'cause it was almost always me propping him up when he was down.

"I was just in a really low moment that one time because Shanna the She Devil was trash talking me so excessively back then for stealing her costume.

"Anyways…Scott…"

She nodded down again to the gun that was now in the man's hand.

Given the pain that was pulsating all through him, Scott honestly almost gave in. He knew he was seven Circles deep by now, with only a couple more to go…but if this Tough Mudder of traumatic murder was what he was dealing with now…what would it be like in the last two levels?

He kept gaping at it, thinking of the real cyclopean incision that the bullet might make in his forehead if he forewent his quest at this point…thought of how dangerous guns could be after all…

…thought of a dangerous moment in which he found one day little Christopher only feet away from a flare gun, a fucking flare gun, which he left unattended while he was listening on the radio to news about potential Sentinel production in Seattle. Only so far from his home in Alaska…but not nearly as much in proximity as that virtual weapon was from his flesh and blood.

There was no way he could ever leave them. And this easy way out was the quickest way away from said family.

"I'm sorry, Lee," was all the man could say, as he handed the revolver back the lady's way.

She looked sadly back at him, then sniffed quietly. "I understand. I only hope you have the same strength to finish this flight downward, as you did to soldier on just now."

Scott stared at the starkly-sanded ground as he spoke. "As you probably know with Scully…it's the love of someone who truly cares that get you thr…"

And just then as Cyke picked up his head to address Lee with eye contact, he noticed that her form was no longer there.

All remained silent for about another few seconds. Then:

"Oh…go on, Scott. Please."

Ragged, jagged claws tore at the man of a sudden as Scott was most unceremoniously wrenched out of the beam tomb in which he was previously situated.

"We were hanging on your every word just now! But soon…

"There'll be pieces of you hangin' offa' EVERY GIRDER!"

Scott found that he could not fight back at all as the claws of Sabretooth—the second-worst natural nails to which he'd ever been subject—had rent at him all over, tearing up his torso here and there. Once Victor Creed had crudely rendered upon Summers's chest a replica of the map of all the permutations of the metro train station route of any major city in the world, he effortlessly flipped the man back to the ground, grunting carelessly as he went.

"He's all yours, Janos…I guess it's really the Quester and the Quested, now."

Scott tried incredibly to stand after the awful assault on his person, so that he could face whoever would come next…

…but was in for yet another shock as what arrived in the following instant was not a person, but rather the projectiles that would precede him. Scott next experienced the sensation of shurikens striking into all of his orifices at once as Janos Quested, alias Riptide, spun onto the scene.

"Perfect score," the purple-and-white weirdo commented as he twirled along. "Even that lanky-ass Longshot couldn't get that lucky."

Cyke was expecting more from this last lout, but as soon as he gathered the impossible strength to look up once more, there was again only empty space.

A moment later he found himself finagled to his feet one more time. Something…someone…was causing the motor impulses in the mechanisms in his body to force themselves into functionality. As soon as Scott could stand, however…

…he felt his balance bound on away from him, and he started once more to trip and slip.

"You are just completely hung over with hurt, aren't you, Mister Summers."

He could make out a green and white swirl of a person this time, of a girl, who was waving her arms in very deliberate oblong patterns. As battered and beleaguered as the man was, no way was Vertigo going to give him an easy time of it.

"Well, let's help him on out of it," the inflection behind Cyke said, very snarkily. "I mean, it can't be nice, to be down here, all alone at least for his side of it, down here in the bowels of this prison, with Prism, and you, and me!

"But Scotty and I, we're about to have a real…blast, of a bonding experience…"

Cyclops noticed in the next split second that Vertigo sidestepped out of the way just as her teammate Scrambler settled his hand atop Scott's head. The villain who had moments ago used his ability productively to get Scott to his feet was now of course corrupting it all and utilizing it most destructively to awaken Cyke's heretofore, in this Circle, stubborn visual lasers. Said redness burst forth most recklessly as it pounded ahead and right into the aforesaid Prism. Both Scrambler and Vertigo hit the floor as the ensuing optic blast bounced off the last Marauder and careened every which way, the energy beam finally pulsing its path back into its source as Scott received a full blast of his own mutant missile.

Ordinarily, such a shock from an optic emission would not begin to shake the man, given the immunity he had to his own energy. Down here in this literal Alcatraz of the afterlife, however, the beam felt ever so brutal as the blast burst through him. Scott remained senseless on the ground for another several minutes, the man unable to move for the longest time…

…till minutes later, he heard another, all-too-familiar sound. Crawling with all the energy he had at this point, the man inched his way over to the lip of a chasm underneath this distorted rendition of the most infamous prison in American history. Scott recalled from Jean's accounts too that Madelyne had considered jumping from a cliff on Alcatraz…the woman ever so distraught disconsolate and desperate to end it all. Miss Grey had related the way in which Madelyne had looked at length upon her wedding ring in that moment…

…a ring that looked very much like the gleaming item in front of Scott's eyes right…

It was the ring.

The man grabbed for it…and it inched away from him, slightly. Cyke darted for it again, with all that he had…

…and then it eluded him by centimeters again, this time the jewel of the ring facing him as if to taunt. He could notice a strange, navy blue speck or two in the diamond that he could not recall noting before.

Scott paused, recovered his breath.

Lunged for the ring one more time, grabbed it…

…and placed it upon his left ring finger automatically, as if by command, at the exact moment the Cliffside upon which he was cooped had crumbled, sending his beaten body down.

It was the fall from the _Mosquito_ all over again. He recalled the way in which he held his brother Alex tight, as he looked back up to his parents' plane just as it exploded, as the debris rained down on his parachute…

…a parachute that looked a little bit like the strong cloth that shot out of the ring right now, that broke the man's fall in this moment and helped him flutter most featherly to a new floor.

One last detail that Scott acknowledged, before he completed his tumble on down, was that the present parachute was not only darker, bluer…it was tattered at the edges. This sight of shredded sapphire was all too familiar to the man, he realized, as he struck the ground.

TO BE CONTINUED


End file.
